Yosemite

The end of July and first week of August, we headed to a family reunion in Yosemite with my parents, siblings, and their families.  We hadn't been all together for 7 years.  We got a head start on the Yosemite trip with a couple days in Mammoth Lakes and a backpacking trip.  Savannah and I camped for 2 nights while Alex and some of the boys did backpacking.  We camped the first night together with Alex and the boys, during which we discovered the air mattress wouldn't hold air.  That was one of the first things Savannah and I needed to do after we dropped off the boys - buy an air mattress. Savannah and I had fun during our girl's time.  We went swimming a couple times, ate out a few times, watched the Barbie movie, saw Devil's Postpile National Monument, Rainbow Falls, and Inyo Crater, got ice cream, went to a bakery, and kayaked on Lake Mary.  I think we had the better deal, compared to the backpacking crew.  They ate Ramen noodles and got chewed up by mosquitoes. But they enjoyed the scenery! 

We met everyone else mid-week.  We stayed with my parents and Audrey and family in one house inside Yosemite.  Mike and his family were about 15 minutes away, just outside the park.  Alison and Ashley were also outside the park, about 35 minutes away, so we did spend quite a bit of time driving back and forth.  We also didn't do everything together.  Some of us went to Glacier Point first thing on Thursday morning.  We met up with others later in the park to do the Mist Trail hike, which was pretty strenuous.  Most of us just went to the Footbridge, but some of the guys made it to the falls.   

On Friday morning, Alex, Jared, and I went ran the Wawona Loop (3.5 miles).  Jared ran the loop 3 times!  We all headed to Bass Lake for lunch, kayaking, and hanging out.  We came back to the same spot at the lake, after getting cleaned up, for family pictures and dessert.  On Saturday morning, just our family went to check out Taft Point (which definitely isn't a place to take young kids, with the sheer drop-offs).  We met several family members for whitewater rafting on Saturday afternoon.  We got to hang out with everyone that evening.  It was fun to meet Alison's baby Bethany, who was born in April.  Most of us hadn't met her yet.   

On Sunday morning, we went to church for Sacrament meeting in the Yosemite Ward.  We met everyone later at the ECCO Center, where we had reserved the place for lunch and hanging out.  We did a few silly then and now picture re-takes, although I don't know what happened to most of those pictures.  Audrey also arranged for us to make a giant "hug" card to write on and send to Nathan and had some crafts for the kids to do.  We also did a family devotional, where my parents shared their conversion story to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  We had a theme for our reunion, "Give Me This Mountain" (which is what all the blue shirts had on them).  That theme was used by the Mission President and his wife in the Denver Colorado mission when they served there.  The wife was one of the missionaries that taught my parents.  The theme comes from the Old Testament story of Caleb and Joshua and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, with Caleb proclaiming "Give me this mountain!"  It's a reminder that we can do hard things and overcome obstacles and trials in our lives. 

On Monday, our family jogged around the 3.5 mile loop again.  We met up with the rest of the family for lunch and chat with Nathan (for his normal weekly Monday chat).  We finished out the day exploring Lower Yosemite Falls.  We headed home on Tuesday morning, stopping at the Fresno Temple on the way out.  We had a good trip!

  

Summer Misc

We had a really busy summer; it seemed to be simply an extension of the school year, with one thing after another.  We had camps, trek, and family reunion (in a coming post) as big events, but then we had all the little things that kept us busy.  Here are some of those things:  temple sealing of a family and mine and Alex's monthly temple trips, youth neon dance and youth activities (baseball, kickball, kayaking), Lord of the Rings movie marathon, Owen's summer league basketball and football, Jared's summer cross country (no picture), pioneer day BBQ, haircuts (Jared learned how to cut Alex's hair), dentist appointments, piano lessons, Savannah's crafts, hanging out with the dog, and swimming lessons.  We still had our summer task list with a daily morning routine, but I let them make their own list this year, so they were all a little different.  Savannah did pretty well on piano lessons.  Jared mostly was teaching himself how to play the piano and did some consistent practice.  Jared also had a couple summer jobs, working at a bakery and print shop.  He has already established a good daily routine.  I think that may be a side benefit of the summer lists; they eventually establish their own routines with good habits without me telling them what to do.  And eventually they don't have to write "shower" and "brush teeth" on their daily to-do list!   

Owen had 3 hours of football practice on Monday-Friday, although he missed sometimes for basketball games.  He did make the summer league BB team, but he really needs to work on shooting.  We spent some mornings practicing at the church gym.  Two of those mornings, he shot three hundred 3-pointers.  He only made about 50 and 68 out of 300 in those shooting practices, but he did finally make a couple of 3's in the game. They call Owen by his last name just like they did when Nathan was playing.  Even though Nathan and Owen aren't much different in height, they call Owen the "little" one.     

 

Weston's Birthday

It wasn't a friend party year for Weston so we just celebrated by going out to eat for lunch at Chili's.  He got steak and molten lava cake.  We had one family over to help eat Weston's spinosaurus cake and watch a documentary on dinosaurs (voiced by David Attenborough).  He requested French toast, turkey bacon, and eggs for breakfast and Mongolian beef for dinner. I made some rolls too, so between that and the dinosaur cake, I was pretty busy with baking that day.  He was waiting for his new Lego set!   

 

Youth Pioneer Trek

For 3 days in July, Alex, Jared, Owen, and I participated in a 5-stake pioneer trek for youth 14-18 years old.  Alex and I were in charge of all the Mas and Pas for this trek.  In January and February, we gave talks at the 5 information nights about our previous experience as Ma and Pa four years ago.  Then we did 4 training sessions (3 in-person and 1 zoom) during May and June.  We trained about 30 couples.  It was an interesting process trying to get the right number of couples to participate.  At first we didn't have enough, so we went through all the alternates.  However, in the last week or so several youth dropped for whatever reason, so then we had too many couples.  We ended up needing 26 couples and one of the couples was dropped the morning of trek.  We felt bad about that.  Each of the 26 families had 7-9 youth in it, so we had over 200 youth participating. It was a big event! 

Alex and I ended up with 5 boys and 4 girls in our family, and they were all strong participants and didn't require extra motivation throughout the trek.  We actually had to try to slow them down most of the time and keep them from running with their handcart.  We had one girl who got sunburned the first day and didn't have a great experience, but she continued to pull the cart and keep going.  Each of the families was assigned a name of Christ to display on their family banner and discuss in one of the devotionals.  We got "Rock", which was fun to talk about building on the solid foundation of Christ.  We had a little R-O-C-K chant along the trail.  I made some rock bracelets for our family that went along with the story of the Brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon. 

There were 4 companies with 6-7 families in each company.  Our family was in the green company.  Owen and Jared were in different companies, so we didn't trek with them, but we saw them at the evening activities back at camp.  We trekked 7 miles the first day, then 13 miles the second day, and 4 miles on the last day.  We had stops along the trail to listen to speakers share about various topics.  

In the evening we did family devotionals, had a nice dinner, and other activities.  We had a motivational speaker on the first night, followed by square dancing.  The 2nd night was free time to hang out and read letters from home.  We got some great food - beef stew, BBQ chicken, salad, bread, apple pie, cookies, oatmeal, pancakes, sausage, hamburgers.  We ate a plain baked potato and a biscuit for lunch on the 2nd day, but otherwise we were fed pretty well.  The last activity of trek was company testimony meetings to let the youth share any experiences they wanted to.   I enjoyed our family devotionals, where we talked about our name of Christ and shared modern-day pioneer stories.  I shared my parents' conversion story and Alex shared how he joined the church.  

The hardest part for me was the foxtails that got stuck in my socks and shoes, not having a chair to sit on, and sleeping on the hard ground with very little cushion.  My back couldn't really take sleeping on or sitting on the ground the whole time.  It was also challenging keeping the youth from running with the carts.  We had a tender mercy with the weather.  At our trek in 2019, the weather was really hot - 95 degrees.  I had prayed and fasted this time for cooler temps.  We had 10-15 degrees cooler this time, which was much more bearable.  I only got one pre-blister that didn't turn into a blister.  My other issue was bloody heels after being told to put on our water shoes for an upcoming crossing while still having to walk at least a 1/4 to 1/2 mile in the water shoes. That was near the end of the 2nd day.

I'm not sure I want to serve as a Ma and Pa again but maybe some other role.  The social and spiritual experience is good, but the physical part is getting more challenging.  The walking wasn't bad, but the aches and pains of sitting and sleeping on the ground was hard.  The heart and mind are willing but the flesh is weak!  Trek is such an interesting experience - so many emotions, unusual things, moments of amazement at the strength of the youth, challenges, the ups and downs.  I love writing letters to our kids, reflecting on their strengths and gifts and things I want to express to them.  That was a spiritual experience for me.  

Jared and Owen had no problems with trek.  They were strong and motivated and got along well with everyone.  They even helped clear brush in the devotional areas along the trail prior to trek, so they got some good manual labor service in before trek even started.  There were very few who volunteered to help with that, but our kids are very dependable and we can always count on them to show up.

We had to find other arrangements for Weston and Savannah.  Savannah stayed with school friends and had a great time.  We had a hard time finding arrangements for Weston.  We eventually decided that he would stay home by himself during most of the day and stay overnight with friends (who both work during the day).  And Kai would stay with Weston (and in our friends' backyard at night).  Weston was thrilled to hang out with our good friends in the evening.  They made steak and Chinese food for him, let him eat ice cream and Oreos, and drink Dr. Pepper.  He watched movies and even hung out during the day on Friday to watch episodes of Ninjago on their Netflix.  He still was a little bit anxious hanging out alone during the day, so we told him to just keep a bat nearby.  He had that bat sitting there when we walked in the door after trek - it was pretty funny looking.  

 

4th of July

The Young Women were in charge of the breakfast and program at the church for 4th of July.  Jared, Owen, and I got there at 6:15am to start working on pancakes (along with other people helping as well).  Owen and Weston helped with the flag raising.  We all stayed to help with clean-up as well.

We had 25 people over to our house for 4th of July cook-out in the evening - good food and good friends!  No one wanted to head out to watch fireworks except for Savannah and me.  Alex knows that I really like the fireworks, so he went with us too.   We tried to meet another group of friends but got there too late to find them, so it was just the three of us. The boys went over and watched Independence Day at a friend's house. 

 

Fun Club

We did five fun club days during the summer, inviting 9 of Savannah's friends over for a few hours each time.  The first was a candy-themed fun club, with a candy grab game and some other games.  Another one was music-themed, with music activities such as music BINGO and a game where they passed along a bag and when the music stopped they had to pull a funny item out to wear. A third fun club was a PJ movie and breakfast dinner night.  They had pancakes and bacon for dinner, followed by watching the movie Enchanted (along with lots of popcorn).  We did one fun club day at the beach, although only 3 friends were able to join us.  Our last fun club before school started again was water-themed.  We had previously shaped salt dough sea turtles, shells, and starfish that were ready for painting.  We also did water balloons, sprayed the garden hose, and ate popsicles, goldfish, watermelon, and had blue-green lemonade.  Each of the fun clubs were a bit like planning a birthday party, just minus the cake.  These were definitely a highlight of the summer for Savannah.